Full Translation of Part III of An Interview with Senior Exco Unofficial Sir S.Y. Chung on Basic Law and Representative Government Published in Ming Pao on Thursday, September 19, 1985
Writer:
Margaret Ng
Main Headline: Sir S.Y. Chung speaks on Basic Law and representative
government
Text:
Q: The Joint Declaration stipulates that the future executive organ would be responsible to the legislature. To achieve this, one of the methods is to promote a ministerial system. Miss Lydia Dunn has also made this suggestion. What do you think about this?
A: Legco is a law-making body. It is also an organisation which controls Government expenditure and decides tax and revenue policies. Legco now comprises Official and Unofficial members. Only Official members can make proposals to raise taxes, while the Unofficials can only restrict these plans and cannot make suggestions in this area. Under the existing system, Government officials not only decide policies, they also promote them! The Financial Secretary is a policy-maker as well as the head of an executive branch. But there will be no Officials in the future and Legco will comprise exclusively Unofficial members. All members will be returned from elections. that time, the decision-making power will be handed over to Legco Unofficials, and Government departments will only be responsible for implementing the policies drawn up by Legco, just like what the Urban Council is doing now. For instance, the hawker policy is drawn up by the UC, and the USD can only carry out the policy decided by the UC. In future, the Unofficial members of Legco will wield the exclusive power to decide all those policies, such as education and finance, which are not put down in black and white in the Joint Declaration.
Sub-headlines:
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A ministerial system will naturally develop after the Unofficials become decision-makers
(Answer continues)
Once the Unofficials have become decision-makers, there naturally would be supporters and opponents for any policy decisions, no matter whether political parties have emerged or not. For example, among the 60 Legco members, 40 support a certain policy while the other 20 oppose. Although the policy is passed, someone among the 20 opponents might raise queries on the policy when it is being enforced. Who would then answer the queries? Isn't it that someone among the 40 supporters has to stand up to answer the questions?